'I'm Not Running Country,' Baker Tells Lawmakers

March 5, 1987|By United Press International

WASHINGTON — Former Senate GOP Leader Howard Baker, the new White House chief of staff, returned to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to pay his respects to congressional leaders but found himself denying that he was running the government.

''I'm not running the country -- you know better than that,'' Baker said in response to a reporter's question during a meeting with Senate Democratic Leader Robert Byrd of West Virginia.

During a meeting with Robert Dole, the man who replaced him as the chief Republican in the Senate, Baker again found himself defending his new role.

''Let me make one thing clear,'' Baker said. ''Ronald Reagan is president of the United States. I am his chief of staff and his program is my program and I have no plans to offer to him anything except support for those programs and initiatives that he initiates.''

Specifically, Baker said he does not have a tax plan he wants Reagan to advocate to help cut the federal budget deficit.

''The only tax plan I have is to try and find money to pay on April 15,'' Baker said as he and Dole stood in front of an oil painting of Baker that hangs in Dole's office suite -- formally known as the Howard H. Baker Jr. Rooms.

Baker, a senator from 1966 until 1984, served as Senate Republican leader for the last eight of those years. And from 1980 until he left the Senate in 1984, Baker was Senate majority leader because Republicans had control of the chamber.

Baker left the Senate to run for president in 1988 but put aside that ambition to become chief of staff Monday. He declined to give any details of Reagan's televised speech on the Iran-contra scandal but predicted the address ''will be well received'' on Capitol Hill and by Americans.

Baker pledged during his ''pay my respects'' meetings with Dole, Byrd, House Speaker Jim Wright, D-Texas, and House Republican leader Bob Michel of Illinois to make better relations between the White House and Congress a ''major priority.''

''It's been a fast start and I think it's going to work very well,'' Baker said. ''I hope to bring to the White House an understanding of the importance of a favorable and amiable relationship between the Congress and the White House.''